In the spirit of the annual Memorial Day drive-a-thon, Jalopnik and Popular Mechanics are both running stories on the best ways to bump up your fuel economy.
While useful, I'm pretty sure most of you won't actually put the majority of these options into practice. So instead of 7 or 10 tips, I give you two simple and free-to-employ tips:
1. Inflate your tires to the specifications which are written on the sidewall of the tire - air pumps are free at the gas station. Underinflated tires create more friction as more of the tread is in contact with the road, sapping your mileage, not to mention your handling and ride quality. Depending on how poorly inflated your tires are now, doing this alone could bump up your mileage by 10% or more.
2. Take all the crap out of car. One of the key elements to engine performance is the "power to weight ratio" - the better this ratio is, the less work the motor has to do to get the vehicle to speed, which in turn yields better fuel economy. It's hard to put an number on this one as far as improvement goes. Obviously, removing the baby grand piano from the roof of your Civic is going to yield more imrpovement than taking a few empty cigarette packs out of blown Hemi Dart. It all helps though, regardless.
Free. Simple. Painless. Get on it.
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